The Assessment of the Affordability of Dwelling Societies in Hyderabad based on Households Perception

H. B. WASEEM, F. A. SHAIKH, M. A. H. TALPUR, S. K. SAMO

Abstract

Shelter is one of the basic needs of humans, having direct impact of socioeconomic development of a nation. The residents’ dissatisfaction with the housing is a major problem, as it promotes the informal development in the city. The bottleneck of this dissatisfaction is the inefficiency of public housing delivery that raises the issues of high plot costs, heavy mortgage, high interest rates, and so on. Therefore, satisfying this need in an affordable manner is intended to be one of the objectives of urban plans. This study identified the key factors influencing the household’s perception regarding affordability of urban dwelling societies and assesses the household’s satisfaction on affordability of urban dwelling societies. Two housing schemes, Bhitai Town and Rehman Town were randomly selected for the study. The data were collected using structured questionnaire, prepared in Urdu language with a 5-point Likert-scale. A total of 65 questionnaires were filled-up from systematically selected migrants with an interval of 10. The factors like, mortgage repayment, house price, water and electricity fees, and down payment requirements, were found to be the key factors influencing household’s affordability. The results also showed overall dissatisfaction with the urban dwelling societies, which means that urban dwelling societies are not affordable, validating the absence of affordability factor. Based on the results, recommendations like, incentive programs, monitoring of development control authority on prices, and increasing public involvement in decision making, were suggested. The inclusion of recommendations would possibly assist in resolving the aforementioned problems in Hyderabad and other urban areas having similar housing scenario.